Sinister: White Nights

[Youn J. Noh]

Wow!  I just listened to this interview of Putin on the radio.  I'm not
well informed about politics, so my comments will be wide of the mark, too
personal.  B...but he reads Tolstoy and Chekhov and Gogol and he had a
black belt in judo at age 18 and he replied ever so charmingly to the
councilwoman from Moscow, Idaho, saying that he had heard there is a St.
Petersburg in Florida and that he had a special desire to visit such
places, St. Petersburg cos it was his birthplace, not the one in Florida
mind!  And he clarified his invitation to Bush to visit Russia during the
White Nights: one can say that the nights are white when everything is
covered with snow but that is not the Russian meaning of the term, no;
it's reserved for those nights from late May to mid-June when the sun
hardly even sets before it's back 'round again.  And they're especially
beautiful in a beautiful city like St. Petersburg!

This kind of natural intelligence, to which I am hardly doing justice, is
only part of what makes a great statesman, but don't you want to go
looking for Renaissance men and women?  Even Proust, who seems so
apolitical, had the inclination to admire M. de Norpois (yes, it's slow
going for me), his antiquated turns of phrase, his promptness in answering
letters, his preference for his father - "a reflection of the completely
individual standpoint which each of us adopts for himself in making his
choice of friends."  (Are we really that unpredictable?)

I have to take my dog out earlier and earlier now.  At least there aren't
soccer moms to contend with on the school grounds.  In October there were
rare days of high skies, the expanse marked by wisps of cloud (it must
have been soon after my post about wedding veils cos the next day I set
out to look for just the right one), and perfect clarity, an accord struck
between summer and winter - they surrendered their weapons so that all I
could think of was the vitality of one and the tranquility of the other.
Now we treasure the contrast of blue and orange tints behind the row of
houses and the smell of lush lawns.  But I still sing to myself, "the
sky is paper white."

At the nursery, they had paper white narcissi again in terra cotta pots.
I got some for my sister last Christmas.  This time she was looking for
flowers to plant around the tree in front of her house.  As we walked
past, the fragrance wafted up and I wondered just how it would figure in
the rest.  The headache you get from eating ice cream, actually feeling
somewhat faint from the intensity of the cold, but elated, intoxicated by
skies into which that fragrance had vaporized so that it could be
apprehended by all the senses.

After we left the record store, my sister made fun of me, my frantic
searching.  It's just that it's been such a long time since I actually
shopped for records in a store!  My sister got lots of good things: Pink
Moon, TBWTAS, Songs From A Room, and Grace, to replace a stolen copy.  I
got a best of Simon and Garfunkel.  Of the songs that are new to me, my
favorites are 'I Am A Rock', 'The Dangling Conversation', and 'The Only
Living Boy In New York'.  I love the introduction to 'I Am A Rock' and
this image in these words - "a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow."

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